Off the top of our heads . . .

The headline trumpeted good news, and that’s what many Americans heard when they got the abbreviated version of the story on TV or radio.

The “wow” aspect that got most of the attention is that the U.S. economy grew for the second straight quarter by a robust 5.7 percent, according to the Department of Commerce. That’s the highest quarterly growth since 2003 — the heyday of the more recent economic boom.

But is it a case of “Happy Days Are Here Again”? Not so’s you’d notice.

It turns out that a lot of that growth came as the result of a statistical blip. Companies that had held off on spending during the gloomiest days of early 2009 ago finally laid out money to replace depleted stockpiles, including of equipment and software. (Microsoft just announced its earnings were up an improbable 60 percent in the quarter that ended Dec. 31 even as the economy was finishing its most dismal annual drop since 1946.)

And of course, the undeniable evidence on the ground, as they say, is the continued high unemployment (and underemployed) rate and the widespread, increasingly deep-seated hardship this Great Recession has caused.

Wall Street may be percolating again, but whatever the economists say, you can’t see the recovery from Main Street. ————————————————————— AL-QAIDA GOES GREEN

Like some Middle Eastern version of Pat Robertson, Osama bin Laden just can’t keep his mouth shut. And when he opens it, something bizarre usually comes out of it.

Yesterday, Al-Jazeera broadcast an audio tape in which the terrorist leader professed to be concerned about climate change. Of course, the man who ordered the 9/11 attacks blamed the United States and other industrialized countries for it.

And, of course, he had his own unique answer to it: He urged his followers to seek “drastic solutions” and “not solutions that partially reduce the effect of climate change.”

He said they should stop buying American products and end the U.S. dollar’s domination of the global economy, whatever the disastrous economic consequences to them.

“I know that this has great consequences and grave ramifications, but it is the only means to liberate humanity from slavery and dependence on America,” he said.

What do you know? Osama bin Laden, environmentalist. —————————————————————THE GOP’S TURN TO CROW

There are still 40 weeks and three days to go until the 2010 congressional elections. And in modern politics, that’s an eon. But Republicans around the country, eager to put the setback of 2008 behind them, are making much of Scott Brown’s victory over Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts special election for the U.S. Senate a couple of weeks ago.

And well they should. Petulant Democrats fume that it’s some sort of sacrilege that a Republican should win “Ted Kennedy’s seat,” as if this were written in stone somewhere, and huffily dismiss the GOP upset in the reliably blue Bay State as an aberration that doesn’t portend anything.

But just imagine if a Democrat won a U.S. Senate seat in a special election in Wyoming. Democratic partisans would be proclaiming it the start of a new era of Democratic hegemony in American politics.

Coming on the heels of the defeats of Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey, it’s fair to say Mr. Brown’s win is a symptom of the widespread discontent among Americans. And with Democrats in power in the White House and both houses of Congress, that’s not a good sign for them.

Will it translate into a GOP rout in November, as Republican partisans are predicting? That remains to be seen. As history shows, a lot can happen in 40 weeks.